Don’t Believe The Hype

Yesterday saw some pretty monumental news as the administrators of The Pirate Bay – one of the top BitTorrent trackers – were convicted by a Swedish court and handed down hefty sentences. The trial had been going on for some time, and it looked as though the Pirate Bay guys were actually winning at one point; on the 2nd day in court prosecutors were forced to drop some charges. Yesterday though the guilty verdict was announced and the 4 men were convicted of “assisting the distribution of illegal content online”. The penalty was a year in jail for each of them and a $3.6m (£2.4m) fine. There’s been a ton of stuff written in the wake of this and I won’t bore you with the same critique as the major news media, but I do want to address one thing. The impact on artists themselves.

The media coverage has been extremely biased towards the record industry giants because (shock horror) most of the news agencies are also part of the same huge corporations as the record companies. I’m not going to try and tell you I think the Pirate Bay were defending Free Culture or sticking up for artists, it might be popular in some quarters if I did but I don’t think the case was that clear cut. This idea that all musicians will be dancing in the streets at the news however is complete bullshit, and you can smell it everywhere. I watched Channel 4 News last night and one of the first things out of Jon Snow’s mouth was “musicians world wide are rejoicing today at the conviction of Pirate Bay operators”. Really Jon? Where? I haven’t seen any and I know a shit loads of musicians, I am one!! Perhaps Cliff Richard is pleased about this but honesty I can’t see many others celebrating. This story you constantly see in the media of the poor artists and the brave RIAA defending them simply isn’t true. The RIAA doesn’t give a damn about musicians, they never have, all they care about is shareholders and investors. I have no problem with that, it’s their job, but let’s be honest about it and not mislead the public. Alienating fans and criminalising them isn’t helping artists in any way. The recording industry has spent the last 10 years trying to cram the genie back it’s bottle and make the Internet go away. The reason for this is simple. In a world where artists can connect directly with fans and cut out the middle man, what’s left for them? Not a whole lot.

Creative Commons is the only way to go

I’ve said this many times and I will continue to say it. Smart artists are using the Internet to connect with their audience directly and make more money than they ever could out of traditional recording contacts. There’s a common misconception that if you’re a musician signing a recording contract should be the ultimate goal, the prize at the end of the road. I say misconception because when a record company says they’re giving someone a £100,000 recording contract, that doesn’t mean they’re giving the band £100,000. It’s easy to be fooled. It means they’re giving the artist a loan of £100,000 that must be paid back in full (sometimes with interest). All expenses for making the product such as manufacturing CDs, paying graphic artists to design the cover, recording the music, shipping, touring, road crew, sandwiches, toothpaste, condoms and anything else you can think of, comes out of that money. I’ve seen friends get into serious debt because of this and be financially destroyed by recording contracts. I’ve known bands with top 10 selling albums and singles earning the princely sum of £90 a week, while their record company make thousands. This is the sad truth of the rock and roll lifestyle for most artists. The one you won’t hear about in the mainstream media. I’m not trying to scare people off here. Being a musician is a dream for a lot of people, and for the one in a million who actually make it past that first recording deal and into good money in a few years great, good on them. I’m not going to try and tell you musicians are slaves because there are a lot of shittier jobs in the world. This idea though that musicians are arm in arm with the lawyers and accountants you see in the news just isn’t true.

When you read the paper or watch the TV, think about who’s trying to send you this message and why. When you hear “oh the poor artists versus the evil Internet” from some recording industry talking head don’t just accept it. It’s only one side of the story. They don’t want to lose control of artists, that’s the real problem. You’ll see stories about how Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails lost a load of money by releasing their music online, in an “oh that will teach them” kind of fashion, but did they really? I’m not so sure. Members of Radiohead have claimed they made more money out of “In Rainbows” than any other record they’ve ever released. Nine Inch Nails last album was one of the top selling records on Amazon for 2008. You never hear about that do you? As I said earlier, smart artists are making money and in some cases doing better without the traditional recording industry. This is the information they don’t want you to hear about. Keep it in mind next time you watch the news. The Internet is not evil, BitTorrent is not evil and the benefits to society from this technology are great. I download many Linux distributions with torrent files, it’s faster, easier and it’s perfectly legal. It’s the easiest way to distribute some large files.

I wrote about the work of the Open Rights Group in fighting copyright extension in the EU earlier this year. Please have a look at the video included in that article if you haven’t seen it. It explains things far more clearly than I ever could – Don’t Kiss That Frog

I’d like to leave the final word on this to some guys who really understand how the recording industry works, Public Enemy. Chuck D has said for years that file sharing is the new radio. Click play on the button below and remember “Don’t Believe The Hype”

10 comments on “Don’t Believe The Hype”

As a keen rambler in the world of British Folk Music it is very much a DIY place when it comes to recording & releasing ones work for many singer/songwriter artists and musicians. Indeed there are more Artists with either their own or a small specialist recording label than on a Mainstream Company payroll.

A brilliant example of the future for Folk is Jim Moray with his last album ‘Low Culture’. He wrote, recorded, engineered & produced the whole thing in the ‘attic’ studio incorporating ‘field’ recordings he took of fellow artists as collaborators on the tracks.

The power of technology at a musicians fingertips for publicity together with word of mouth recommendations via social networking is getting more people to live Folk gigs/concerts which is where many then buy the physical cd’s. Most Folk people have their own websites where actual cd’s can be bought or downloaded.

The biggest headache in the Folk scene is that of the PRS ‘heavy handedness’.

@EnglishFolkfan – Great to hear from you and I can certainly agree with that view. I love all styles of music but I’ve played in many folk clubs over the years. I used to play every week at Bromborough Folk Club for many many years but recently time has been scarce, I hope to get back into it soon. I spend a lot of time around musicians and I think they’re being misrepresented in some of the media. The idea that it has to be musicians VS the Internet is utter crap. It’s big business and outdated business models VS the Internet using musicians as an excuse. Thanks for reading and commenting, I really appreciate it 🙂

Since the site operators were charged with “assisting the distribution of illegal content online” due to pointing users to data as opposed to actually hosting the data, will the major search engines be sued next? I fail to see a difference between going to a torrent tracker site and searching for “illegal” content and going to google/yahoo/live.com and searching for illegal content.

@jezra – I think that was part of the defence case but obviously it didn’t work. I bet you the large media companies don’t go after Google because they don’t want to fight an opponent with deep pockets. They prefer to sue people who do this at home in their bedroom and can’t afford a massive legal team and a judge or two.

Although the prosecution didn’t go after a large company, this case will be used to set case law. If TBP loses their appeal, the court decision will set a precedent by which the prosecution can sue any entity that links to or helps people find illegal content.

@Jezra – Good point, I didn’t think about that. The International nature of this must have an effect though. I don’t know if a ruling in a Swedish court holds much weight under US law for example. I guess time will tell.

@Jezra – Yes good point. Google Sweden should be worried. The avatar thing is randomly generated when someone posts. I thought they were quite fun and more interesting than the usual boring ones you see. Sorry, I dunno how to change yours now, you’re stuck with it 😀

Chuck D is right. Before the internet we all listened to a lot more radio, taped it, taped and shared our mates’ records, too. Yes, it was “illegal”, but everyone did it and a lot of musicians who deserved to get rich did so in spite of it. I suspect more than a few blood-sucking suits got mega-rich, too.

By “illegally” sharing our music, what we liked and could afford we more often than not used to go out and buy. And if we didn’t, it was because we bought something else we’d heard that was newer, better, cooler, rarer and shared that, thus “opening” the musical source and sharing the goodness.

We all still do the same, just in a different way and, thanks to TBP and others, we have more “mates” now than ever before 😉

As for the “ruling” issues, it’s one thing to set a precedent, make an example out of some poor unfortunates and try to intimidate the rest of us (or is that two things?), but how can “they” enforce this, really?

The law is an ass. Just because something worked before doesn’t mean it works now. It’s broken. These people are still trying to get their horses to run faster.

That’s what the establishment doesn’t get, and why they are trying to take over and control the ISPs and why open-source is beautiful 😀

@David – Thanks for the comment. My musical world has always worked like this and so has many others. My friends and I have always shared our music on tapes and more recently mini-discs. We spend a lot of money on music and most of us have very large record collections on CD and vinyl of stuff we first heard “illegally”, not to mention all the concert tickets we’ve bought. I find it a bit rich that bands like Metallica who owe their whole career to bootlegging are so anti-piracy now. Back in the 80’s they couldn’t get played on the radio and the only way news fans found them was through the passing of tapes and word of mouth. Fast forward 20 years when they’re fat and rich, it’s a different story. They will happily sue fans. It’s their choice but they should remember where they came from. Most successful musical artists lost touch with reality years ago, when the real world comes calling they don’t like it.